Subjective Art History: Considerations in Amelia Jones’ Irrational Modernism What does Amelia Jones’s Irrational Modernism: A Neurasthenic History of New York Dada (2004) contribute to the contemporary discourse of art criticism? Giulia Gentili 1 What does Amelia Jones’s Irrational Modernism: A Neurasthenic History of New York Dada (2004) contribute to the contemporary discourse of art criticism? In 1971, Linda Nochlin’s renowned paper, ‘Why have there been no great women artists?’ catalysed a feminist revisionist movement that questioned art history’s linear canons. Followed by scholarly writings such as Griselda Pollock and Roszika Parker’s Old Mistresses (1981) and, later, Mira Schor’s ‘Patrilineage’ (1991), the feminist critique of art history continued (and still does) to unearth and recuperate artists that were lost or forgotten due to their gender, race or sexuality. Seemingly, Amelia Jones’s Irrational Modernism: a neurasthenic history of New York Dada (2004) follows in the vein of revisionist art history movements of the 1970s, 80s and even 90s. Jones picks ‘the most fetishized of all canonical histories’ to dismantle the seminal genealogy that supposedly fathered postmodern art by both unearthing the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and revisiting well known works by Duchamp, Picabia and Man Ray.1 Using New York Dada as a framework, Jones doesn’t just present a revisionist art history but, perhaps, more importantly, a critique of the methodologies of art history as a practice. She considers not just what we are taught but how we are taught it and presents alternative techniques based on subjectivity. This essay will consider whether Jones’ performative criticism contributes a novel way of interpreting not just art’s histories but also how these methodologies could apply to contemporary art criticism. I will consider not only what has led her to these techniques but their application and what this could contribute to art criticism and art historical methodologies. Revisionist art history Jones resurrects the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven to lead us through the streets of New York in the 1910s and, in doing so, creates a personal and, more importantly, subjective bond with the character. She identifies with the Baroness’s obsession with Marcel Duchamp and in doing so, introduces (or reintroduces) the other key player to this story. Jones’s first book (and her doctorate thesis) Postmodernism and the En-gendering of Marcel Duchamp (1994), was a study on Duchamp as the ‘origin of the postmodern lineage’ and how this attribution has shaped discourse on postmodernism.2 Jones’s interest in Duchamp continues in 1 Schor, Mira, ‘Cassandra in the City,’ review of Irrational Modernism: a neurasthenic history of New York Dada, by Amelia Jones, Art Journal 65:2 (Summer 2006) 133 2 Jones, Amelia, Postmodernism and the En-gendering of Marcel Duchamp, (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1994) 1 2 Irrational Modernism. Though on the surface, the Baroness appears to be the protagonist of Jones’s newer history, on closer inspection, she maintains Duchamp’s importance as she attempts to break his patriarchal spell. Similarly to Postmodernism and the En-gendering of Marcel Duchamp, Jones stresses the dominant role that Duchamp and his readymades have played in constructing a ‘rational’ patriarchal lineage of art history. She looks to seminal art historical texts such as Peter Bürger’s Theory of the Avant-garde (1974) in which his definition of the historical avant-garde places Duchamp as, what Mira Schor would call, its ‘mega-father’.3 4 5 Highly influential to following texts written by the likes of Hal Foster and Benjamin Buchloh, these ideas became deeply imbedded in, and ‘absolutely central to dominant Anglophone understandings of avant-gardism’.6 Jones stresses the reoccurrence of this feat and draws similar links to other ‘patrilineages’ such as Greenberg’s formalist model that smoothly moves from Manet to Picasso to Pollock. 7 When explaining the repercussions of these claims, Jones makes direct links to Nochlin’s arguments in ‘Why have there been no great women artists?’ (1971).8 Nochlin equated this ‘unquestioned, often unconscious meta-historical premises’ with the term ‘genius’; bestowed upon certain white, male artists such as Duchamp.9 This grants them an almost mythical importance that makes these theories seem incontestable and, more importantly, creates an unattainable status for more marginal artists.10 The oversimplified history of the evolution of art is exemplified in Alfred Barr’s well-known chart, ‘The development of Abstract Art’ (fig. 1). Drawn for the Cubism and Abstract Art exhibition of 1936, Barr’s chart paints a picture of a ‘perfect’ art history in which one ‘movement’ flows neatly into the other. Jones particularly picks out ‘racist conflations’ of ‘Negro Sculpture’ and ‘Near-Eastern Art’ as they feed into the ‘heroic European and United States-based movements’.11 This relates to the marginalization of ‘irrational’ subjects, such as the Baroness, that do not conform to the white male- centred ideal that results in oversimplification. 3 Bürger, Peter, Theory of the Avant-Garde, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984) 51 4 Jones, Amelia, Irrational Modernism: a neurasthenic history of New York Dada (Boston, MA: MIT Press, 2004) 20 5 Schor, Mira ‘Patrilineage,’ in Art Journal 50:2 (Summer 1991) 58 6 Jones, Irrational Modernism, 20 7 Ibid. 21 8 Ibid. 19 9 Nochlin, Linda, ‘Why have there been no great women artists?,’ in Nochlin, Linda, Women, Art, and Power, and Other Essays (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988) 147 10 Schor, ‘Patrilineage,’ 58 11 Jones, Irrational Modernism, Dada 158 3 These lineages ‘encourage [an] impersonal, sociological, and institutional orientated approach’ to our critique of art history.12 This, as Jones highlights, is the fundamental issue in the way art history is taught, and therefore written. Similarly, in conversation with Matthew Arnatt, Matthew Collings compares Donald Judd’s more ‘personal’ writing to that of Art Monthly’s writers who choose words ‘in order to sound as if they’re saying something’.13 This considers our perception of critical writing: the more authoritative in its objectivity, the more we read it as ‘truthful’. Feminist critiques of art history (and history for that matter) have long contested this methodology whose roots are reinforced by education. In Mobile Fidelities, Martina Pachmanová interviews a series of well-known feminist art historians. Topics of revisionist art history and art education reoccur and there is a resounding understanding of the connection between academic writing and objectivity. However (be it from Linda Nochlin, Susan Rubin Suleiman, Amelia Jones, Janet Wolff or Mira Schor) the categorical response highlights the impossibility of history writing as objective.14 In her strive to revisit the supposedly ‘objective’ writings on New York Dada, Jones then embarks on a reinterpretation of well-known works by male Dadaists through a critical feminist lens. In the chapter ‘Dysfunctional Machines/Dysfunctional Subjects’, Jones looks to the works of Duchamp, Man Ray and Picabia that ‘ooze and leak’ and critiques their supposed masculinity.15 She associates the machine to ‘leaky masculinity’ and in doing so uncovers the more psychologically traumatised ‘irrational’ side to these artists.16 Jones also dedicates the chapter ‘War/Equivocal Masculinities’ to the effect of the war on New York. With many claims that the distance from Europe meant that New York was far less affected by the war, Jones presents the argument that the deep psychological weight of not fighting could have similar neurasthenic consequences.17 Both originally European and having escaped to New York to avoid the war, it would seem impossible that the war had no effect on Duchamp and Picabia.18 In doing this, Jones finds a way to explain that there must be more going on than the rationalized male output that comes with the generalised model of the movement. The oversimplification of art’s histories, championed by objective ‘authoritative’ writing has led to the marginalization of not just artists such as the Baroness but also new and discursive interpretations of canonical works of art. 12 Nochlin, ‘Why have there been no great women artists?’ 153 13 Collings, Matthew, in Arnatt, Matthew and Collings, Matthew, Criticism (London: Rachmaninoff’s, 2004) 18 14 Pachmanová, Martina (ed.) Mobile Fidelities: Conversations on Feminism, History and Visuality (London: KT Press, 2010) 15 Jones, Irrational Modernism, 118 16 Ibid. 125 17 Jones, Irrational Modernism, 39 18 Ibid. 40 4 Subjectivity and Performative Criticism Jones quite poignantly writes ‘how do we construct a legitimate or convincing history of a movement from what essentially amounts to gossip?’ thus making the case for the impossibility of true objectivity.19 As historians, we make decisions about what we write and how we write it based on personal interpretations, experience and the relationship built with the topic.20 At this point, she begins to channel her writing towards the idea of subjectivity and how that could influence art writing. This seems to be a shift in focus from a feminist critique of a particular movement to the broader critique of art history as a practice. From the beginning of the book, Jones is incredibly clear about her investment in the subject and states her personal connection to the Baroness as a fellow ‘neurasthenic’ and someone who also finds herself on the outskirts as a feminist scholar.21 22 The second part of Irrational Modernism is an exploration of what could be achieved from the acceptance of subjectivity in art history writing. Jones explains that ultimately if ‘irrational’ bias were to be acknowledged, it would permit readers to critically engage both with the material and with the critique allowing for a more complex understanding of why the critic would value work in a certain way. Similarly, it would let for multiple interpretations of a subject thus making the practice of art history a live and on-going practice.